Finally, I’m going to be in one place for more than five days.  After all of the travelling I’ve done this semester, I feel like I haven’t been able to really settle into a routine.  Perhaps that’s a good thing as I move closer to my impending change of life after graduation.  I suppose I’ll develop a new normal, but it doesn’t necessarily feel that way right now.  I also suppose I’ll be able to call somewhere “home” at some point in time, although that seems very far out of reach too.

While we were in San Diego, having a great time with 16,000 other chemists, I had a minor … breakdown, shall we say.  I realized that I had to make a decision about graduate school and that I needed to make that decision soon.  After a long day at the conference, we sat down to dinner with one of my professor’s former students, who is a PhD candidate at one of the schools I applied to but have not heard from yet.  It was after my conversation with her and my professor that I deflated a little bit.  You see, this school was my first choice of school, and to not hear from them yet…

For a long time when I was applying to grad schools, I didn’t have a first choice, because I didn’t want to get my hopes up and then be let down.  Now I feel as though I’ve let my professor down as well as myself since I’ve been waitlisted at my first choice.  And this provided the perfect opportunity for the devil to rear his ugly head and whisper lies into my ears.  “You can’t do it,” he says.  “Why did you think you were good enough to get into these schools?  You’re unprepared, inadequate, unwanted and unloved.  You’re a failure for not getting in, for getting waitlisted.  You’re not strong enough to move somewhere on your own and live by yourself.  You’re still alone because no one wants you, still single because you’re not pretty or cute or fun, you’re not what they want.  You thought you could do this?  You can’t.”

I know these lies, I’ve heard them all before.  I’ve experienced this before, but every time it hurts just as much.  As much as I don’t want to listen, to hear these lies, I do.  The devil’s whispers are loud.  But God’s voice is louder.  He speaks through people, through circumstances, through music and through science.  He placed people in the right places at the right times this weekend to allow me to squelch some of the lies of the devil.  No, it’s not going to be an easy road in the next few weeks, months or years.  But as always, God is in control, even though it may be hard to see.

As I continue to try to figure out where I’ll be going to school next year, I’d appreciate your prayers for wisdom and discernment.